“If you want something from life, you need to grab it – whether it's money or cock, or both, for that matter.” Although he’s not sure if he’ll take it in the way it’s intended, this is the advice given to Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen) by his friend Asif (Dilan Amin) in Danish director Mathias Broe’s first feature, Sauna [+], which he brings to world-premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition. With five shorts under his belt, Broe jumps spryly into the feature world with a strong grasp of style and a tangible passion for making queer bodies and stories vibrant on screen. The film was co-written by Broe and debuting screenwriter William Lippert, based on a book of the same name by Mads Ananda Lodahl.
Johan works at Copenhagen’s only gay sauna (fittingly named Adonis for cis, white and young idealisations of male beauty), where we find him scrubbing down a clear panel outfitted with glory holes. But Broe casts the sauna as more of an art museum than a hideaway, with paintings hanging on the walls of each darkroom. Our protagonist scrolls through a fictional Grindr equivalent, but what he really wants is intimacy, not fast-tracked hedonism in a space dominated by quick hookups, as epitomised by such apps.
However, on the app, he meets William (played by transmasculine actor and comedian Nina Rask), a trans man sensitive about the fact he has not yet formally started hormone therapy or had gender-affirming surgery. Although Johan is initially surprised, he’s clearly attracted to the charming man. But trouble, of course, befalls the happy couple: the sauna – which also forces William to leave the premises, not considering him a man – fires Johan for stealing money to help fund William’s surgery, and he is kicked out of his flat. These early-film moments are like a slap in the face, revealing to the audience their stiff, exclusionary and transphobic environment. An early conversation finds Johan in a group that asks if they are “gold star gays”, or men who have never slept with women (a concept that has been decried time and time again as both transphobic and biphobic). The director and DoP Nicolai Lok make a strong visual delineation between the cis spaces frequented by Johan and his friends, strobe-lit clubs where people can hide in the shadows, versus those of William and his friends: still colourful, but considerably more open and relaxed.
Broe intricately crafts this complex relationship through two informal parts. The first half feels somewhat like a warm yet flirty hug exemplified by sex and lush moments spent together in the early bliss of a honeymoon phase, even if Johan’s desire for William at times feels undeveloped. The latter half is devoted more heavily to the tensions that arise when William encounters immense difficulties with the healthcare system. This portion begins to drag when Johan and William’s fights are repeated in similar ways, but the cracks starkly reveal themselves.
Johan loves William “as he is” – so why can’t William love himself, even if he doesn’t have immediate access to hormones or surgery? Broe makes clear what cisgender people thus take for granted: it’s just not that simple. And so, Sauna’s central romance becomes caught between a trans person’s need to live as they are and his partner’s desire to express love – two acts that shouldn’t necessarily be in conflict but end up clashing because of the system in which they live. However, the movie still closes with a satisfyingly defiant spark of hope. It's up to the audience to decide whether it's misguided, a show of true love or both.
Sauna is a Danish production by Nordisk Film Production A/S. Its world sales rights belong to TrustNordisk.